Now in its fourth year, the Dean’s Research Excellence Awards (DREA) continue to celebrate the outstanding and influential scholarship emerging from across the Faculty of Arts & Science.
Established to help accomplished mid-career researchers compete successfully in national award competitions, the awards recognize scholars whose work has made a lasting impact in their fields.
This year introduces a new distinction: the Peter Knowland Large A&S Dean’s Research Excellence Award, presented to the humanities scholar who ranks highest among all DREA nominations. The inaugural recipient of this honour is Ian Williams.
“I extend my congratulations to these outstanding scholars. Their research reflects not only exceptional rigour and creativity, but also a deep commitment to advancing knowledge that shapes our world,” said Stephen Wright, interim dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science.
Susan Antebi
Susan Antebi is a professor in the Department of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies. She is a scholar of 20th century and contemporary Latin American literature, and a leading authority on Mexican literature and culture. Her research and writing focus on disability and corporeality, especially in the contexts of contemporary and twentieth-century Mexican cultural production. Described by the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies as “a leading scholar working at the intersection of disability studies and Latin American discourses of human difference,” she is considered to have initiated the field of Latin American disability studies. Her current research projects centre on eugenic legacies in contemporary Mexico and the Americas, and on para-abnormal agency in literature and spectacle.
Marsha Chechik
Marsha Chechik is a professor in the Department of Computer Science, and Bell University Chair in Software Engineering. Her pioneering work in the area of software safety and security has addressed some of the most challenging theoretical and practical problems in the field, making her a leading figure in software engineering. Her work on modeling and reasoning about partial and uncertain software models has provided novel methods and frameworks that enable developers to make progress even with incomplete information. Her contributions to software product line engineering are advancing the work of major companies around the world. In addition, her award-winning research on the formalization of safety assurance cases has facilitated the verification of safety-critical systems.
Max Friesen
Max Friesen is a professor in the Department of Anthropology. A specialist in North American Arctic research, he is a world authority in the archaeology of the Circumpolar North. His work explores how the linkages between social organization, world view, economy, technology, environment and landscape have shaped northern peoples’ lives over the past 5,000 years. He has performed fieldwork in many northern locations, with particular focus on the Cambridge Bay region of Nunavut and the Mackenzie Delta region of the Northwest Territories, where his research is performed in close collaboration with Inuit communities and organizations. Among other accomplishments, he has helped to locate and study ancient settlements and revealed key insights into some of the North’s earliest populations.
John Stinchcombe
John Stinchcombe is a distinguished professor of ecological genetics in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, and director of the Koffler Scientific Reserve. Known as a global leader in the field of ecological genomics, his research in plant genetics focuses on the interaction between Darwinian natural selection and genetic variation. He uses genetics to determine how evolution will be facilitated or constrained. He pairs this with studies of natural selection in the field, with an emphasis on measuring natural selection in contemporary populations. The goal of Stinchcombe’s research program is to understand plant evolution in response to global change, including biological invasions, pesticides and warming.
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor is a professor in the Department of Chemistry. He has demonstrated sustained excellence in organic chemistry research, developing new chemical reactions to facilitate the preparation of complex molecules for applications in drug design or biochemistry research. He is recognized as an international leader in the chemistry of carbohydrates, or sugars. Methods developed in the Taylor Group have been applied to prepare oligosaccharides, glycolipids, nucleoside analogs and sugar-derived polymers. In 2019, Taylor received the ACS Isbell Award for “excellence in and promise of continued quality of contribution to research in carbohydrate chemistry.” He is also well-known for his work in the area of boron chemistry, specifically the development of boron-based catalysts.
Ian Williams
Ian Williams is a professor in the Department of English, as well as director of the MA Program in the Field of Creative Writing. He is also academic advisor for the William Southam Journalism Fellowships. Williams is the author of eight highly acclaimed books, which form the foundation of his career as a novelist, poet, non-fiction author, teacher and mentor. Among his works is the novel Reproduction, which won the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Disorientation: Being Black in the World, an essay collection, was selected as a best book of the year by the Boston Globe. Williams has taught over 25 courses in creative writing, American literature, African-American literature, poetics and composition.
Victoria Wohl
Victoria Wohl is a distinguished professor in the Department of Classics, and one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient Greek literature. Her research spans a variety of genres and discourses and focuses in particular on the social relations, political thought, and psychic life of democratic Athens. Wohl has published work reflecting 900 years of Greek literature, encompassing genres such as tragedy, comedy, oratory, historiography and philosophy. She has consistently forged connections between antiquity and modernity, asserting that the field of classics has much to contribute to modern discussions. The author of numerous published works, she is currently completing a book on the poetics of the Presocratic philosophers.